This Day in History

[xoxoxoBruce]

1943 – The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.

You make it sound like a bad thing. When NYC pushes urban renewal they just throw everyone out in the street. Whereas the SS escorted all the residents to new accommodations... by train. Not only that, the SS gathered and itemized all the valuables, so the people wouldn't have to worry about them.

[Gravdigr]

March 14

44 BC – Casca and Cassius decide, on the night before the Assassination of Julius Caesar, that Mark Antony should live.

1663 – Otto von Guericke completes his book on Vacuum.

1757 – Admiral Sir John Byng is executed by firing squad aboard HMS Monarch for breach of the Articles of War.

1794 – Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin.

1885 – The Mikado, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, receives its first public performance in London.

1900 – The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.

1903 – The Hay–Herrán Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty.

1910 – The Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vents to atmosphere.

1936 – The first all-sound film version of Show Boat opens at Radio City Music Hall.

1942 – Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the United States successfully to treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.

1964 – A jury in Dallas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy.

1967 – The body of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.

1994 – Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released.

1995 – Space exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle.

Births

1804 – Johann Strauss I♪ ♫, 1863 – Casey Jones, 1874 – Anton Philips (co-founded Philips Electronics), 1879 – Albert Einstein, 1912 – Les Brown♪ ♫, 1914 – Lee Petty, 1916 – Horton Foote, 1920 – Hank Ketcham (created Dennis the Menace), 1921 – S. Truett Cathy (founded Chick-fil-A), 1921 – Ada Louise Huxtable, 1923 – Diane Arbus, 1925 – William Clay Ford, Sr., 1928 – Frank Borman, 1933 – Michael Caine, 1933 – Quincy Jones♪ ♫, 1934 – Eugene Cernan, 1939 – Raymond J. Barry, 1941 – Wolfgang Petersen, 1945 – Michael Martin Murphey♪ ♫, 1948 – Billy Crystal, 1950 – Rick Dees♪ ♫, 1951 – Jerry Greenfield (co-founded Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream), 1958 – Albert II, Prince of Monaco, 1959 – Steve Byrnes (racing reporter), 1961 – Gary Dell'Abate ('Baba Booey'), 1961 – Penny Johnson Jerald (' Kasidy Yates' on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), 1961 – Mike Lazaridis (founded BlackBerry Limited), 1965 – Billy Sherwood♪ ♫(Yes), 1968 – Megan Follows (Anne of Green Gables), 1979 – Chris Klein, 1983 – Taylor Hanson♪ ♫(Hanson), 1984 – Aric Almirola, 1986 – Jamie Bell, 1988 – Stephen Curry, 1988 – Sasha Grey, 1997 – Simone Biles

Deaths

1757 – John Byng, 1883 – Karl Marx, 1932 – George Eastman (founded Eastman Kodak), 1973 – Chic Young (created comic strip Blondie), 1975 – Susan Hayward, 1976 – Busby Berkeley, 2010 – Peter Graves, 2013 – Jack Greene♪ ♫

[Gravdigr]

My last regular This Day In History post will be April 14. That will make one year since I've been posting regularly in this thread.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

My last regular This Day In History post will be April 14. That will make one year since I've been posting regularly in this thread.

It's a lot of fucking work, ain't it? Plus the pressure(from yourself) to not miss a day. Thanks for the diligence, but I kind of wished you'd posted This Day in the Future, instead.

[Carruthers]

Thanks for all your efforts, Grav.
There's always something interesting to read and ponder over.
However, some of the occurrences that I remember well, and thought happened only a handful of years ago, actually took place a couple of decades back.
Perhaps that is what happens when you are no longer in the first flush of youth.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You mean closer to the last flush?

I'd read them all but never used the links, if something blew my skirt up I'd Google it.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

You mean closer to the last flush?

Yes, I'm painfully aware that there are more flushes behind me than there are in front of me!

I made a will a couple of years ago which hammered home that stark fact.
It's life's only certainly, but it's difficult for me to articulate just how much making that will affected me.
It didn't help matters that I'd taken my canine chum for a walk through the church yard just before signing.
For some reason I took an inordinate interest in the inscriptions on the grave stones.

[fargon]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

My last regular This Day In History post will be April 14.

Who ever will lead us in our education? Without you we are nothing. Whatever will we do. (As he leaves sobbing into the Night)

[Gravdigr]

March 15

44 BC – Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus, and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

493 – Odoacer, the first barbarian King of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, is slain by Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, while the two kings were feasting together.

1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1783 – In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'état never takes place.

1819 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel wins a contest at the Academie des Sciences in Paris by proving that light behaves like a wave. The Fresnel integrals, still used to calculate wave patterns, silence skeptics who had backed the particle theory of Isaac Newton.

1820 – Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state.

1906 – Rolls-Royce Limited is incorporated.

1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne ending the 304-year Romanov dynasty.

1931 – SS Viking explodes off Newfoundland, killing 27 of the 147 on board.

1952 – In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in a 24-hour period, setting a new world record (March 15 through March 16).

1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

2011 – Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.

Births

270 – Saint Nicholas (no, not that one), 1767 – Andrew Jackson, 1887 – Marjorie Merriweather Post, 1911 – Lightnin' Hopkins, 1913 – Macdonald Carey, 1933 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1935 – Judd Hirsch, 1935 – Jimmy Swaggart, 1940 – Phil Lesh, 1941 – Mike Love, 1943 – David Cronenberg, 1943 – Sly Stone, 1947 – Ry Cooder, 1955 – Dee Snider, 1956 – Clay Matthews, Jr., 1959 – Fabio, 1962 – Terence Trent D'Arby, 1963 – Bret Michaels, 1964 – Rockwell, 1968 – Mark McGrath, 1969 – Kim Raver, 1972 – Mike Tomlin, 1975 – will.i.am, 1975 – Eva Longoria, 1985 – Kellan Lutz

Deaths

44 BC – Julius Caesar, 220 – Cao Cao, 493 – Odoacer, 1898 – Henry Bessemer, 1937 – H. P. Lovecraft, 1975 – Aristotle Onassis, 1997 – Gail Davis, 1998 – Benjamin Spock, 2001 – Ann Sothern, 2007 – Bowie Kuhn, 2009 – Ron Silver, 2014 – David Brenner, 2015 – Mike Porcaro

[Gravdigr]

March 16

1621 – Samoset, a Mohegan, visited the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them, in English, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset."

1802 – The Army Corps of Engineers is established to found and operate the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1870 – The first version of the overture fantasy Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky receives its première performance.

1916 – The 7th and 10th US cavalry regiments under John J. Pershing cross the US–Mexico border to join the hunt for Pancho Villa.

1926 – History of Rocketry: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

1936 – Warmer-than-normal temperatures rapidly melt snow and ice on the upper Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, leading to a major flood in Pittsburgh.

1945 – World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ended, but small pockets of Japanese resistance persisted.

1945 – Ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers, resulting in around 5,000 deaths.

1958 – The Ford Motor Company produces its 50 millionth automobile, the Thunderbird, averaging almost a million cars a year since the company's founding.

1968 – General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, an Oldsmobile Toronado.

1978 – Supertanker Amoco Cadiz splits in two after running aground on the Portsall Rocks, three miles off the coast of Brittany, resulting in the largest oil spill in history at that time.

1984 – William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists. (He later dies in captivity.)

1985 – Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut. He is released on December 4, 1991.

1988 – Iran–Contra affair: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

1988 – Halabja chemical attack: The Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10000 people.

1995 – Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865.

Births

1751 – James Madison, 1822 – Rosa Bonheur, 1906 – Henny Youngman, 1911 – Josef Mengele, 1916 – Mercedes McCambridge, 1926 – Jerry Lewis, 1927 – Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1940 – Bernardo Bertolucci, 1941 – Chuck Woolery, 1942 – Jerry Jeff Walker, 1949 – Erik Estrada, 1949 – Victor Garber, 1950 – Kate Nelligan, 1951 – Ray Benson, 1954 – Nancy Wilson, 1956 – Clifton Powell, 1959 – Flavor Flaaaaav, 1961 – Todd McFarlane, 1964 – Gore Verbinski, 1967 – Ronnie McCoury

Deaths

37 – Tiberius, 455 – Valentinian III, 1903 – Judge Roy Bean, 1971 – Bebe Daniels, 1971 – Thomas E. Dewey, 1975 – T-Bone Walker, 1983 – Arthur Godfrey, 1988 – Mickey Thompson, 2013 – Frank Thornton, 2014 – Gary Bettenhausen, 2016 – Frank Sinatra, Jr.

[Gravdigr]

March 17

45 BC – In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda.

180 – Marcus Aurelius dies leaving Commodus the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.

1337 – Edward, the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy in England.

1776 – American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, ending the Siege of Boston, after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.

1780 – American Revolution: George Washington grants the Continental Army a holiday "as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence".

1891 – SS Utopia collides with HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar and sinks, killing 562 of the 880 passengers on board.

1941 – In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1942 – Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland.

1947 – First flight of the B-45 Tornado strategic bomber.

1948 – Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.

1960 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

1966 – Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.

1968 – As a result of nerve gas testing in Skull Valley, Utah, over 6,000 sheep are found dead.

1973 – The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, depicting a former prisoner of war being reunited with his family, which came to symbolize the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

1985 – Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles murder spree.

2000 – Five hundred thirty members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in a fire, considered to be a mass murder or suicide orchestrated by leaders of the cult. Elsewhere another 248 members are later found dead.

Births

1804 – Jim Bridger, 1834 – Gottlieb Daimler, 1902 – Bobby Jones, 1919 – Nat King Cole, 1938 – Rudolf Nureyev, 1941 – Paul Kantner, 1944 – Pattie Boyd, 1944 – John Sebastian, 1949 – Patrick Duffy, 1951 – Kurt Russell, 1954 – Lesley-Anne Down, 1955 – Paul Overstreet, 1955 – Gary Sinise, 1959 – Danny Ainge, 1960 – Arye Gross, 1960 – Vicki Lewis, 1961 – Sam Bowie, 1961 – Casey Siemaszko, 1964 – Rob Lowe, 1967 – Billy Corgan, 1969 – Alexander McQueen, 1972 – Mia Hamm

Deaths

180 – Marcus Aurelius, 1853 – Christian Doppler, 1956 – Fred Allen, 1974 – Louis Kahn, 1990 – Capucine, 1993 – Helen Hayes, 1994 – Mai Zetterling, 1996 – Terry Stafford, 2006 – Oleg Cassini

[glatt]

Thank you for doing it too! I don't always comment on these posts, and sometimes don't even have time to read them. But when I do, I am always rewarded.

[DanaC]

1757 – Admiral Sir John Byng is executed by firing squad aboard HMS Monarch for breach of the Articles of War.

The crux of the charge being that he 'failed to do his utmost' iirc.

My last regular This Day In History post will be April 14. That will make one year since I've been posting regularly in this thread.

Well I'll be sad to not have your daily digest of historical happenings - but I also think a year is more than enough for one person to commit to for something like this. I did a brief stint of posting daily stuff on twitter, some years ago, and I think I managed, like a month. And that was just one thing a day.

[DanaC]

2011 – Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.

Jesus - six fucking years, man.

[Gravdigr]

Whew.